Five Newsworthy Stories for Your Next Press Release

Most bloggers understand that online press releases can drive traffic. Press releases are powerful ways to reach people through search. As Lee Odden wrote in his book Optimize, “search is an explicit expression of need or want” and online press releases provide the means to reach people at the precise time they are expressing that need. This of course can result in one thing many bloggers desire the most: traffic.

This is especially important for the better press release distribution services. They must enforce editorial guidelines or risk having their content rejected by distribution partners.

The biggest catch? We’ve got to have a news angle—that is, there’s got to be something new in our announcements. I’ve seen bloggers struggle with this concept the most, and so here’s a few ideas that I’ve found make great press releases that are effective and simple to produce.

1. More reads for the most read

As bloggers, we know that to build a community, we’ve got to blog consistently. The same is true for online releases: we need to develop a regular cadence for our announcements.

One very easy way is to announce our most read blog posts every quarter.

Take a look at your analytics and determine which posts earned the most unique visitors and then write a press release about it. Is the media going to call us? Probably not, but we’ll definitely earn some traffic and hopefully repeat visitors. This works best if we can find a trending angle—as you can see my company follows our own advice and earned 1,000 new visitors with this release.

2. Themes emerge in blogs

Sometimes bloggers like to experiment with an idea—we get a hunch and the float the idea on our blog to gauge the reaction. One idea leads to another and the next thing we know, we’ve got a whole series of blog posts.

As they say in the news business, three is a trend, so look for a trend that emerges from all time we’ve invested in blogging and find those emergent themes. Then, write a press release that illustrates the trend just like a hard news story you might read on a major news site. In this case, your press release is the story.

3. Research is newsworthy

Matt Landau is like any other entrepreneur trying to make a living. To promote his business, he does what good marketers all do well: he’s active on social media, publishes a blog, and contributes content elsewhere. He’s got a niche in vacation rental marketing and over the years has accrued wisdom that he’s turned into products, like reports, guidebooks and research he sells on his blog.

For one of his latest products he spent $199 on a press release and earned $3,850 in bookings. However, he is cautionary against suggesting such success can come overnight. During a phone conversation, Matt noted that content marketing is a “slow, long hard process that requires a commitment, but if you are confident and persistent, that persistence pays off.” The lesson? Consistency matters.

4. The news before the news

Starting a review site? Want products to review on a blog? We’ve got to tell someone about it if want them to come—building it isn’t enough.

Marie Howard was tired of lousy beauty products and started a blog, Howard House Reviews, to review beauty products for women. And she announced it to the world. Ah, but that’s only a one-time announcement, right? No. The consumer industry has sales seasons and so too should review blogs.

Journalist Beeb Ashcroft announced her Holiday Gift Guide for 2012 which will help drive traffic, but also attract new products to review, and in turn, drive more traffic. There’s an announcement for every season.

5. Announce what’s new

Satyam Kumar is a yoga teacher that knows how to promote his business. He blogs, he has a newsletter, and he creates audio podcasts and video tracks for practicing the various yoga techniques he teaches and he hosts them on his blog.

When he uploads a newest yoga podcast, he puts out an announcement about it and is careful to point out to readers they can subscribe on iTunes, so he gains not just visitors, but subscribers.

This tactic can work well for any sort of new content we produce on our social outposts and embed on our blogs: the latest YouTube video you embedded on demonstrating your software, or the latest speaking presentation just posted to SlideShare. If this works well, double down and post the five most views SlideShare presentations to the blog and announce that too.

Get tactical—and practical—with your next release

These ideas are not strategic—they are tactical and intended to be practical ways to promote a blog with press releases. There’s a quotation often attributed to Hinduism that might well apply: “An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.”

Frank Strong is the director for Vocus, which also owns PRWeb, Help a Reporter out (HARO), iContact and North Social. Follow @PRWeb on Twitter for more tips on press releases.

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I’m starting up a business soon offering to run official websites for football clubs and I am going to have to learn how to write effective press releases that will not only be sent out to various websites but a selection of local newspapers as well.

That is certainly a viable, if not traditional strategy, Dean. The point I’m trying to make, especially for bloggers, is you’ve worked hard at building an engaged community; now how do you grow it. On the side, I’m a blogger too; I understand how much love, care and feeding goes into a blog. Releases are just for the media anymore, but a chance to reach potential prospects outside your circle of influence.

These were some good ideas. I like the idea of listing my most popular posts every quarter. Also, the idea of reviewing things is definitely something I need to incorporate into my blogging plan. Thanks.

Amazing and fresh ideas! I really would too wish to become skilled at how to inscribe valuable press releases that will be more flourishing and crucial to an assortment of websites. Your information really inspires and thanks a lot for I have got a new idea to start my business so soon! I’m sure your advice would totally apply!

I was about to start blogging and now l am glad l dropped by your post, the issue of doing research and reviewing our posts just rocked everything.We should review everything to make sure that there are no errors and our researches should be well done if we want to hit the market in style.

This is what l need to put into practice to keep my blogs going, good tips. New products needs to announced so that your readers will have a clue of what is going on, you should also leave behind a way they should get you if they want clarification on certain things.

Hi Frank, this is a great post. I regularly work with PR agencies and PR consultants, but not once have any of them mentioned what you have said in “More reads for the most read” about releasing your top most read blog posts in order to build PR momentum. This is indeed a ‘niche’ tip and one that I find quite intriguing. Thanks for sharing. I guess I can go back and train the trainer!

You know, Shameer, Brian Solis said something long ago that has really stuck with me; to paraphrase, we are all students of new media. It’s so true. We don’t know, what we don’t know. Thanks for the comment.